Making Tabs for All Windows Programs with TidyTabs

Windows don’t seem to like tabs that much. Except for IE and Edge, it’s hard to find any native Windows programs that are tab-based. There are a lot of tools out there that make windows program tabbable, but none of them actually can tab together different program.

TidyTabs is a tool that brings tabbed browsing to all of your programs. You can tab multiple Remote Desktop clients and VNC client together to form an integrated environment for your remote management needs. Or, you can tab several command prompt windows and PuTTY together to make your shell environment. How nice.

When you have TidyTab installed and running, you will see an extra draggable tab popping up when you move the cursor close to the top right corner of any running program. To create a tabbed group, just drag one onto another. They can also be detached from one group and joined to another through the same dragging dropping action.

The tabs are quiet and are trying not to get in your way of work. They are hidden automatically when any of the programs in the same tab group are not in use and are semi-transparent until you actively use them.

You can customize the tabs’ appearance, enable/disable almost every single function of TidyTab from the Settings menu. You can even use the blacklist and whitelist the exclude the programs that never need to be part of any tab groups.

TidyTab works on Windows 7 and above with the support for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. It also has a portable version that you can carry and execute from a USB flash drive without any installation involved.

TidyTab is a commercial product but does have a free version with limited functions comparing to the Pro edition. With the free version, you can only group up to 3 windows with no tab reordering, renaming, middle click to close and no support for multi-monitors. So, if you are a tab person with dual monitor set up at work or home, paying $9 to waive all these limitations should be the way to go.